All posts tagged Gangnam Style

It’s harder to stumble into viral video fame these days. But YouTube has just released a list of the top ten videos that managed to find massive viral viewership this year.

Five years ago, when YouTube pieced together its first list of the year’s top ten videos, many were accidental home videos or amateurish films never designed for widespread consumption, said Kevin Allocca, a trends manager for the company.

With nine of the ten videos that made this year’s YouTube list coming from professional producers, making a video that appears to be an accidental hit is becoming increasingly typical. The list was released Tuesday morning.

“There are more and more people who know how to build an audience, how to use YouTube,” Allocca said. “There are companies who spend millions and millions of dollars trying to do create these videos.” Read More »

Today, the news broke that South Korea’s most enigmatically successful export, horse-dancing rapper/raconteur PSY, has anti-American skeletons in his closet — leading him to issue a statement of apology for two separate incidents during the early 2000s in which he publicly attacked the U.S. and its military policies.

The scandal comes as PSY nears an imminent milestone — the staggering one billionth viewing of the video for his goofy earworm “Gangnam Style” — and as he prepares to perform at a December 21 charity concert in Washington, DC before an audience that is scheduled to include President Obama.

News of the incidents first broke in the form of a posting on CNN’s citizen-journalism platform iReport on October 6. The pseudonymous post, accusing PSY of being “the worst anti-Americanist and opportunist,” went largely ignored, until Bobby McGill, a former San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, picked up the story for an extensive feature in his Busan, South Korea-based English-language magazine, Busan Haps. Read More »

A month ago, on a riotously lovely morning in Orange County, California, I stumbled into perhaps the most convincing display I’ve yet encountered of the potency of hallyu– a Korean term that literally translates as “The Korean Wave.”

I’d been invited to be a panelist at KCON ‘12, which billed itself as “the first-ever large scale convention dedicated to the hottest entertainment coming out of Korea.” The event was conceived of and organized by the cable channel MNET America, the U.S. branch of the hugely popular Korean music network that might be called the “MTV of Korea” (except that MTV is in Korea and MNET is way bigger).

I’ll admit that my initial response was skeptical. Even as I accepted the invitation to speak, I suppressed a nagging fear that MNET was forcing into existence something that wasn’t there, trying to engineer a need among K-Pop fans to gather as a collective from the top down, rather than letting it spring up from the grassroots.

It’s a concern that worried the executive who spearheaded the event, too. “We knew that the fandom was out there. We’d seen these fan gatherings spontaneously manifest at other events we’d sponsored,” says Ted Kim, EVP and U.S. chief of MNET America’s parent company, CJ Entertainment America. “But we were struggling, because it’s very hard to get good data when it comes to phenomena like this. You’re just not able to quantify things. And at some point, you just need to make a leap of faith.” Read More »

The Country Music Association Awards are being held tonight and Speakeasy is live-blogging the event. Tonight’s hosts are CMA vets (and nominees) Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley, and other stars up for awards include Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, Kelly Clarkson, Jason Aldean, Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles, Kenny Chesney and married superstar singers Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert. Who will take home the top prizes and who will be named Entertainer of the Year? Join the conversation and leave your two cents in the comments.

7:50 pm (EDT)

It's country music time! Not long after Taylor Swift scored another number one album and another million-seller, the CMA Awards 2012 have come back to TV. Who do you think will be the big winner? Let us know in the comments.

What happens when you cross a viral music video starring a paunchy, middle-aged Korean pop star with the work of a paunchy, middle-aged Chinese dissident artist?

In a new clip, released on Wednesday, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covers Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” the breakout online K-pop phenomenon whose success has smashed through cultural and linguistic barriers. The new clip appears to show Mr. Ai at his Beijing studio performing the “Gangnam Style” horse-riding dance along with his entourage, interspersed with scenes from Psy’s original video.

Dressed in a bright pink shirt and black suit, Mr. Ai cuts a dapper stand-in for Psy, whose face does not appear in the spoof. But apart from revealing the obvious – yes, even global art stars like to horse around – what is the video about?

A clue may be in its title, “Caonima Style.” In Mandarin, caonima (草泥马) is a loaded term: It means “grass mud horse,” an alpaca-like animal popular in children’s cartoons, but it also sounds like an obscenity. Its double meaning has confounded Chinese Internet censors.

The four members of the superstar K-Pop group 2NE1 staged a brief American tour this summer–could they win more fans in the U.S.? In the wake of the breakout success of rapper Psy’s hit song “Gangnam Style,” more doors could be opening for acts from South Korea.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the four members of 2NE1 (C.L., Minzy, Dara and Bom) discussed how their record label, YG Entertainment, helped them attract fans in Japan, Korea and elsewhere by building partnerships with brands such as LG Electronics and Adidas. Boosted by their early hit songs, “Lollipop” and “I Don’t Care,” the group recently appeared in an Adidas commercial with hip-hop star Nicki Minaj, and have been working on new songs with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.

Wyelin Chiu might not be a household name yet, but she features Asian household celebrities in her blog Eiffel In Seoul.

Chiu, a blogger based in Singapore, covers Asian celebrity fashion from the red carpet to magazine spreads. Among the celebrities she writes about are Chinese actresses Zhang Ziyi and Fan Bingbing, and K-pop (Korean pop) stars 2NE1 and Girls’ Generation.

“Hollywood celebrity fashion is always covered, but there was almost no one covering Asian celebrities,” said Chiu, who started the blog when she was 17 years old. “I figured everyone must be curious about what they are wearing as well.” Read More »

South Korean rapper PSY continued his domination of pop culture by appearing for a second time on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” this time performing the full “Gangnam Style” song with his back-up dancers.

A week ago, PSY briefly appeared on the show to teach DeGeneres and guest Britney Spears how to do his trademark invisible-horseriding step. “My style of dance is dress classy, dance cheesy,” PSY said at the time, complimenting Spears’s high heels. Over the weekend, the rapper and his quirky dance made a cameo on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” during a sketch about “Gangnam Style.” Read More »

Two weeks ago, actress and singer Patti LuPone grabbed a cell phone out of the hand of an audience member who was texting during a performance of her current play, "Shows for Days." The bold move led to an outpouring of support from fans fed up with glowing screens. Ms. LuPone gives us her five rules of theater etiquette.